Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Harukaze Bitter Bop, vol. 1

By Court BettenReleased in the US by TokyoPop

Slugline: Craziness that seems phony, but underneath the phoniness is a crazy truth

On the way to school Chiyoharu meets Souza of the North Wind, an amnesiac martial artist that seems indestructible and Kaede, a high school aged undercover detective, who decide to follow him.Chiyoharu has enough problems already in school, being considered a delinquent because he and his friends accidentally set a fire at the school that spread beyond their control.While his friends were caught, he wasn’t though it was suspected that he was involved, and so he continues to attend the school under a cloud of distrust.So Chiyoharu is left trying to put his life back together with the assistance of characters that seem to have to wandered in from another genre and what is worse, they start proving all their craziness seems to be true.

Not quite sure how to take the series, whether at it’s heart it is a serious or parody title, and for the moment it seems like a parody title’s set-up being taken seriously.That usually means things are going to go bad very quickly, because parodies are funny because they are extreme, and if you tried to live that way it would be dangerous.It is the combination of the pettiness of the extreme characters, parody and the attempt to deal with it that makes the story interesting.The art is nice and plain, and that is meant in the best way, because if you are going to convince readers of the intrusion of parody into reality, one has to believe the world is real.I like this title, but I am not sure whether or not they will be able to continue to balance the serious and the absurd.

Yes, I do hope some of his other works make it over, I especially like the descriptions I have read of it. What I am saying in the review is that these sort of stories tend to be either the creation of throwing everything against and seeing what sticks, or a bit of careful planning and choice necessary to balance the absurd and the realistic. Since this is my first title that I actually read by him, I am really hoping it will be the second but feel I have to warn people it may be the first...

Google Ads

Welcome to Prospero's Manga

We post reviews of all kinds of manga - shojo, shonen, yaoi, manhwa (Korean), OEL (original English language), and hey, pass the Chinese too if you've got any - and we're a tough audience because we've been fans of manga and anime for over 15 years.

Rankings are from 1 to 5 stars, including halfs. That means a 3 is "average".

We post new reviews twice weekly, Tuesday and Thursday.

Full disclosure: Virtually all of our reviews are of publisher provided free copies. Considering some of the ratings we have given out, I hope you can see that we show no favoritism and little kindness because of that.